The dramatic blaze in Heritage Lane, West Hampstead. Photo: Kirsten Levermore 

• HOW many more fires are there going to be that show up the dangers of Margaret Thatcher’s relaxation of the building regulations? She introduced the concept of self-assessment in 1986.

You report on a newly constructed building that catches fire from a single cigarette left in a flower pot, with flames leaping up three storeys of the building in seconds because it seems the façades of the balconies were of combustible, reclaimed, timber, (Major blaze at flats development in West Hampstead, July 5).

So much for the farce of self-assessment and inadequate building regulation control by the local authority.

Has no one heard why Sir Christopher Wren introduced the concept of incombustible brick panels 3ft wide vertically and horizontally between windows, an answer to the fire of 1666 which spread from one timber frame house to another and destroyed the whole city in five days?

How long is this farce going to go on? Are the ventilated smoke lobbies, banshee fire alarms, magnetic door closers, functioning dry risers forgotten in the new blocks of flats springing up all over places like Stratford and Bow with no space even left for car parks and children playgrounds?

Who is responsible for checking the design of these blocks? Is this in the hands of companies keen to make a profit from any old rubbish, and councils keen to cram the poor into as tight a space as possible?

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